Two ex-Guantanamo detainees to sue US

Two Sudanese nationals speak of their ordeal, from the time they
were picked up in Peshawar, through the horrors of interrogation and
torture in Bagram and Guantanamo

PESHAWAR:
Two former Guantanamo Bay prisoners from Sudan, who were picked up from
Peshawar, are demanding an apology and planning to sue the United
States after spending five years behind bars at the US detention
facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

“We were detained for five
years in Guantanamo. So many innocent prisoners were discharged over
the past two years without giving any explanation after keeping them
for years behind bars. But, we will sue the US for an apology and
compensation,” said the two Sudanese nationals, Salim Mahmud Adam and
Adel Hasan Hamad. Both were picked up in Peshawar on suspicion of
having links with Al Qaeda. They were released from Guantanamo Bay five
years later.

“We are planning to sue the US with the help of
human rights groups,” said Adam. The Sudanese teacher told Daily Times
that on May 27, 2002, when he opened the door of his house in the early
morning hours, officials of “Pakistani intelligence agencies”
handcuffed him immediately.

“At 1am they surrounded my house
from all sides. My wife was pregnant at the time, but they showed no
mercy,” said Adam, who was the principal of an orphanage school and
residing in Hayatabad at the time. “I was blindfolded and taken into
custody,” he said. He said he was interrogated before being shifted to
Bagram, another notorious US detention camp and airbase in Afghanistan.

“My
torture ordeal began early in Bagram and interrogations would sometimes
last for three to four hours,” he said, adding that two months later,
along with other Al Qaeda suspects, he was shifted to Guantanamo, “an
inhuman place”.

He recalled the harsh interrogations, beating
and screams of fellow detainees, and the loud music played at prayer
times. Some interrogators, he said, would tell him they knew he was
innocent, but this was a political game. Like Adam, compatriot Adel
Hasan Hamad, 50, will always remember the day he was arrested in
Pakistan, on July 18, 2002. He was working in a private hospital in
Peshawar as an administrator.

Leaving his family back in his
homeland, Hamad came to Pakistan on July 16, 2002. “I only wanted to
help refugees in Afghanistan and Pakistan,” he said. Two days after my
arrival, I was arrested, he added. He said “Pakistani intelligence
officers” accompanied by an American official woke him up, told him not
to move and asked for his travel documents.

Hamad said he was taken to a Pakistani prison, where he was held for over six days and questioned by intelligence officials.

Along
with three others, handcuffed and blindfolded, he was boarded onto an
American military plane headed for Bagram, a stopover for most people
headed to Guantanamo. “There they started beating us,” he said. US
soldiers and officials subjected him to constant interrogation, often
coupled with beatings, verbal abuse and threats. “They would not let us
sleep,” he added. After two months of repeated interrogation and
punishment, he was shipped to Guantanamo, he said.

In
Guantanamo, Hamad was again subjected to daily interrogation.
Sometimes, twice a day. “They accused me of helping the Taliban and Al
Qaeda,” he said. “I asked how so? They said that they learnt it through
secret information”. However, charges were not officially levelled
against him, he added.

In 2004, Hamad and Adam said they
appeared before a Combatant Status Review Tribunal that cleared them of
charges of being enemy combatants. However, it was not until September
2007 that a military court finally cleared them of charges of posing a
threat to the United States.

They said the US had declared all
Guantanamo detainees “unlawful enemy combatants” to deny them legal
rights under the American legal system. Only three of about 750 people
sent to Guantanamo since 2002 have faced formal charges.

Around
400 prisoners have been discharged over the past two years, but without
any explanations offered for why they were detained, they said. Hamad
was told that his daughter Fida passed away while he was languishing in
Guantanamo. His family, which lost its source of income after Hamad was
picked up, could not afford treatment for her after she became unwell.
Adam is back in Peshawar again and says he is trying to move his
Pakistani wife and three children to Sudan.